santos scribes

when I spray the 10-in-1 hair perfector 

on my dry(but-not-yet-splitting)ends 

the miracle spray smells like 

my adoptive sister Rachel 

smelled for most of 1989 

it feels strange then, in 2025 

to miss and remember the smell 

of an old black & white perfume bottle  

more than a person. 

after deciding last year 

that I’m not really a “short hair person”

my dark-ish-brown

(copper-when-the-sun-hits-it) hair 

stops right above my heart now

this mix of memory & revelation  

brings a depressive sort of realism too-

a heavy dot beneath all those vertical lines.

later I’m passing the front of an Elementary School 

and the towering Scotch Pines are damp and green

with last night’s raindrops

their strewn brittle needles are a carpet

obvious and dead at my feet

I look to the trees and the clouds  

to find a black crow hanging

on to an empty branch 

cawing like they remember too-

waking up inside a cold tent, 

the smell of dampened campfire

fresh and heavy in the late August morn

that forested pond 

somewhere in southeastern Connecticut 

the fourth grade

and everything that would come after  

still just days away. 

about this poem

I am forever interested in human memory as it pertains to the olfactory system of smell. How is it I can be transported to a place or a person so far removed with just the faintest trace of an essence?